Mahjong CompendiumNMJL card

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NMJL card

1937, annual hand list

Sources

Sources

The documents this entry rests on, as published. Each can be opened and checked; nothing in this part is anybody’s reading of them.

  1. Encyclopedia Mahjong Wiki. "American Overview." mahjong.wikidot.com. canonical checked 2026-10-09

    http://mahjong.wikidot.com/rules:american-overview

    chart’s note Cited as the source for individual nodes in the chart's node table. Carries no bibliography or per-claim citations of its own; see the appendix on tracing the wiki.

    for this variant The chart's canonical source for this node, re-read 2026-10-09. It supports the annual hand list but gives no date, so it does not carry the 1937 in the node's detail

    Also cited on: American mah jongg · bibliography #49

  2. Journalism "Mah-Jongg Is Staging Comeback with Rules to Speed Up the Game." Chicago Daily Tribune, 2 August 1938. cross-check checked 2026-10-09

    https://archive.org/details/per_chicago-daily-tribune_1938-08-02_97_183

    AI summary A short item on the women's page. It reports that an Illinois branch of the National Mah-jongg League was organised three weeks earlier, that over 200 have enrolled, and that Mrs. Viola Cecil of New York, founder of the League, will speak at a luncheon the next day. Read in the Internet Archive's OCR text of the issue.

    for this variant A second period source, independent of the chart, naming Viola Cecil as the League's founder. It shows the League spreading beyond New York by mid-1938 with its new hands in play, but says nothing about a printed card

    Only cited here · bibliography #405

  3. Guide Sloper, Tom. "FAQ 11h: Mahjong History Timeline." Sloperama. cross-check checked 2026-10-09

    https://sloperama.com/mjfaq/mjfaq11h.html

    AI summary Dated timeline, including the late-Qing novels that show the game (Han Bangqing 1892, Li Boyuan 1903, Ouyang Juyuan 1903-04, Sun Jiazhen, Zhang Chunfan 1906-10, Lu Shi'e 1911) and the names each uses for the dragon tiles.

    for this variant The fullest chronology of the card read. It implies League hands from 1937 but names no first card, cites no source for these entries, and is one of the reference sites the chart family leans on, so it is not independent

    Also cited on: Late Qing style, Mahjong Masters Millions · bibliography #114

  4. Encyclopedia Grokipedia. "American Mahjong." supporting checked 2026-09-18

    https://grokipedia.com/page/American_mahjong

    chart’s note Jokers appearing in sets from the 1940s; the NMJL mandate from the 1960-61 season.

    for this variant AI-written; adds nothing on the founding beyond the League's own pages, and does not date the first card

    Also cited on: Regional US house rules, American mah jongg · bibliography #17

  5. Guide MahjongCompare. "Mahjong History and Origin." supporting checked 2026-09-18

    https://mahjongcompare.com/history

    chart’s note NMJL founders (Cecil, Meyerson, Jacobs, Potter), the 1937 Essex House meeting, and jokers entering the official rules in 1961.

    for this variant Gives no sources. Its Essex House meeting and nearly-400-women details are borne out by The New Yorker of 2 October 1937, which calls the gathering the League's first annual convention; its 35,000-by-1941 figure stays unsourced

    Also cited on: Babcock rules, Regional US house rules, American mah jongg · bibliography #14

  6. Guide The Charleston Club. "The History of American Mah Jongg." cross-check checked 2026-09-18

    https://thecharlestonclubaz.com/blogs/the-journal/the-history-of-american-mah-jongg-from-1920s-import-to-a-century-old-american-tradition

    chart’s note Babcock's 1920 translation and the Parker Brothers / Milton Bradley licensing.

    Also cited on: Babcock rules · bibliography #16

  7. Guide The Mahjong Line. "History of the Game." cross-check checked 2026-09-18

    https://themahjongline.com/pages/history

    chart’s note Wright-Patterson origins among Air Force officers' spouses at Wright Field, Ohio.

    Also cited on: Wright-Patterson · bibliography #15

  8. Encyclopedia Wikipedia. "American Mahjong." supporting checked 2026-09-18

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_mahjong

    chart’s note Racks, jokers, the Charleston, and the NMJL / AMJA annual card.

    for this variant Its 1935 Official American Rules claim traces to mahjonged.com (2006), which cites nothing and misnames the League; read it as an error, not as a conflicting source

    Also cited on: Babcock rules, Regional US house rules, American mah jongg, AMJA card · bibliography #13

  9. Organisation National Mah Jongg League, official website. cross-check checked 2026-09-18

    https://www.nationalmahjonggleague.org/

    AI summary The League's own site. In 2026 it advertises the current card while celebrating 89 years, which dates its own founding to 1937.

    for this variant The League's own dating, now also stated outright on its The League page (a 1937 New York meeting) and matched by period reports from 1937 and 1938

    Only cited here · bibliography #63

  10. Journalism "Old Game." The Talk of the Town. The New Yorker, 2 October 1937. cross-check checked 2026-10-09

    https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1937/10/02/old-game

    AI summary An unsigned Talk of the Town paragraph on the first annual convention of the National Mah-Jongg League at the Essex House, New York. It reports upward of four hundred women delegates meeting to agree on standardized rules and interviews Mrs. William Cecil, the League's founder and first president. It is the earliest account of the League read so far.

    for this variant The earliest dated account read and independent of the chart. It puts the League in New York by autumn 1937, already holding its first annual convention, and is the period source behind the Essex House and four-hundred-women details that MahjongCompare repeats without citation

    Only cited here · bibliography #404

  11. Organisation National Mah Jongg League. "The League." nationalmahjonggleague.org. cross-check checked 2026-10-09

    https://www.nationalmahjonggleague.org/league.aspx

    AI summary The League's own page on its history and services. It dates the founding to a 1937 meeting in New York City called to standardize hands and rules, says the League changes the hands and rules every year and supplies the Official Standard Hands and Rules card, and gives 32 founding members against over 350,000 today. Undated; its "more than 86 years" places the text around 2023-24.

    for this variant The governing body's own account, independent of the chart's cited sources. It dates the founding to a 1937 New York meeting and states that the hands change every year, but names no founders and does not say when the first card was issued

    Also cited on: American mah jongg · bibliography #401

  12. Organisation National Mah Jongg League. "The Game." nationalmahjonggleague.org. cross-check checked 2026-10-09

    https://www.nationalmahjonggleague.org/game.aspx

    AI summary The League's short introduction to the game. It tells the origin legends, credits Joseph Babcock with popularising it in the United States, and sets out what makes American play different: a card of Standard Hands changed every year, more tiles including the Joker, and the Charleston.

    for this variant The League's own statement of how the card system works. It adds nothing on dates

    Also cited on: American mah jongg · bibliography #402

  13. Guide Sloper, Tom. "Mah-Jongg Cards." Sloperama. cross-check checked 2026-10-09

    https://www.sloperama.com/mjfaq/cards.html

    AI summary Describes how the annual American card works as an artefact and how the NMJL and AMJA cards differ in form. Used here only for structure, never for hand content.

    for this variant Describes how the card system works now. It says nothing on the card's origin

    Also cited on: AMJA card, Siamese Mah Jongg, Mhing · bibliography #52

  14. Commercial Mahjonged.com. "The History of Mahjong." mahjonged.com, © 2006. cross-check checked 2026-10-09

    https://web.archive.org/web/20100815091830/http://www.mahjonged.com/mahjong_history.html

    AI summary An unsigned history page on a free online mahjong game site that also links to shops selling sets and books, read through the Wayback Machine capture of 15 August 2010. English Wikipedia cites it for a 1935 "Official American Rules" published by the "National Mahjong League, Inc." The page gives no source for that.

    for this variant The origin of Wikipedia's 1935 date. An unsourced 2006 game-site page that misnames the League cannot outweigh the period reports of a 1937 founding

    Only cited here · bibliography #403

  15. Journalism LaChance, David. "Author shares history of mah-jongg in US." The Associated Press (from the Bennington Banner), in The Seattle Times, 23 April 2018. cross-check checked 2026-10-09

    https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/author-shares-history-of-mah-jongg-in-us/

    AI summary An AP report of a talk by Gregg Swain, co-author of Mah Jongg: The Art of the Game (2014). It covers the game's American history, the National Mah Jongg League's founding and its annual card, and Wright-Patterson rules.

    for this variant An independent secondary account that agrees on 1937 and the annual card. It gives five founders where Sloperama and MahjongCompare name four, and it is secondhand, from a talk

    Only cited here · bibliography #406

  16. Organisation The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco. "Project Mah Jongg." Exhibition page, 13 July - 28 October 2014. cross-check checked 2026-10-09

    https://thecjm.org/exhibitions/44

    AI summary The museum's page for its showing of Project Mah Jongg. That touring exhibition was curated by the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York and funded by the National Mah Jongg League, and covers the game's history and its link with Jewish women from the 1930s. It lists scorecards among the artifacts shown.

    for this variant Museum evidence for the League's place in Jewish-American culture and its role as the exhibition's funder. It gives no founding date or card history

    Only cited here · bibliography #407

AI-generated

Analysis

Written by an AI model from the sources above. It is a reading of them, not a source in its own right: every figure in it points back to a numbered source, and where the two disagree, the source is right.

Assessment

Confidence
documented a published ruleset or rule description exists and is cited
Evidence
corroborated two or more independent sources agree on the facts that define this variant

Cross-comparison

What each source was read to say, set side by side. The numbers are the sources above.

SourceTilesHandFlowersScoringPayout
[1]152 tiles: the basic set plus 8 flowers and 8 jokers, with racks and score cards————
[2]——The Illinois branch president says the new version has more intricate hands with flowers wild——
[3]——Flower table from column 509: 8 flowers 1937-1942, 12 in 1943, rising to 24 in 1950-55, then falling; jokers from 1961; eight of each from 1971——
[4]—Around 70-80 hands on each year's card; 71 on the 2025 card———
  • [5] in 1937 four women, Viola Cecil, Dorothy Meyerson, Herma Jacobs and Hortense Potter, founded the National Mah Jongg League in New York City; nearly 400 women rallied at Manhattan's Essex House hotel to support standardising American rules
  • [6] dates the founding to 1937 in New York City, by a group of predominantly Jewish women from the Upper West Side
  • [4] dates the founding to 1937 in New York City
  • [7] dates the NMJL's start to 1937
  • [8] CONFLICT: states that the National Mah Jongg League, Inc. published a volume of 'Official American Rules' in 1935, which predates the 1937 founding date the other four sources give
  • [9] RESOLVES THE CONFLICT: the League's own site, selling the 2026 card, describes itself as celebrating 89 years. Counting back from 2026 gives 1937, which is the League's own dating of its founding
  • [1] Calls NMJL rules a synthetic ruleset whose winning patterns change every year, played with racks, jokers and score cards. It gives no founding date, no account of the League and no sources; the wiki's American Scoring page adds only that the NMJL publishes a new scoring card each year
  • [10] Reports the League's first annual convention at the Essex House, with upward of four hundred women delegates meeting to agree on standardized rules. Mrs. William Cecil, founder and first president, says the League sprang up spontaneously and estimates a hundred thousand players. The page metadata dates it 24 September 1937 for the issue of 2 October 1937; it does not mention a printed card
  • [2] Reports an Illinois branch of the National Mah-jongg League organised in July 1938, with over 200 members enrolled and 1,000 expected within a month. Mrs. Viola Cecil of New York, founder of the League, is to speak at a Chicago Beach hotel luncheon
  • [11] Says rival groups' home-made hand combinations caused confusion until a 1937 meeting in New York City founded the League to standardize hands and rules. It changes the hands and rules each year and supplies the Official Standard Hands and Rules cards; it started with 32 members and has over 350,000 now. The page's "more than 86 years" was not updated with the homepage's 89
  • [12] Sets American Maajh apart from other forms by a card of Standard Hands against which every game is played and which is changed every year, by more tiles, notably the Joker, by the Charleston, and by jokers completing quints and sextets
  • [3] Dates the League's formation to 1937 at the Essex House, with four founders: Viola Cecil (president), Dorothy Meyerson, Herma Jacobs and Hortense Potter. Lists Meyerson's That's It (National Mah Jongg League, April 1937), revised yearly for at least 29 years, and Cecil's Maajh (1938). Card milestones follow: 12 flowers in 1943, the year hand in 1955, jokers in 1961, 152 tiles in 1971, and the No Picking or Looking Ahead line removed in 2024
  • [13] The NMJL card is a list of hands, updated every year, mailed around 1 April, and red or blue in alternate years. It is bought from the League or its collectors, buyers get a yearly bulletin of rule changes, and proceeds go to charity. Marvelous, The Mahjong Line and Oh My Mahjong issue alternative cards played under NMJL rules
  • [8] Says play aims at a specific hand from the scorecard the NMJL and AMJA issue each year, and that the NMJL publishes an official rulebook every year. It gives no founding date; its 1935 Official American Rules is cited to mahjonged.com through a 2010 Wayback capture
  • [14] Gives the 1935 Official American Rules of a "National Mahjong League, Inc." as what turned the American style into its distinct form. It cites nothing and has no other detail on the League or the card
  • [15] Gregg Swain says five Jewish women founded the League in 1937. The report adds that each year the League issued members a card of the tile combinations to make and gave collected dues to charities, and that it counts about 350,000 members
  • [5] Credits the NMJL with codifying the annual scoring card and the Charleston, adding jokers in 1961, and reaching over 35,000 members by 1941. It gives no sources
  • [4] Says the NMJL introduced the cards shortly after its 1937 founding in New York, publishes them every year, and updates the card each April
  • [16] The 2014 San Francisco showing of Project Mah Jongg, curated and circulated by the Museum of Jewish Heritage and funded by the National Mah Jongg League. It presents the game as tied to Jewish women from the 1930s and shows scorecards among its artifacts

Reading it

The 1937 New York founding is now established both by period reports and by the League itself. The New Yorker of 2 October 1937 reported the League's first annual convention at the Essex House, where upward of four hundred women delegates met to agree on standardized rules, and named Mrs. William Cecil as founder and first president. The Chicago Daily Tribune of 2 August 1938 also names Viola Cecil as founder. The League's own page dates the founding to a 1937 New York meeting called so that all players would use the same hands and rules, and says those hands change every year. The chart's canonical source, the Mahjong Wiki, supports only the annual change of hands and gives no date. Sources disagree on the founders: Sloperama and MahjongCompare name four (Cecil, Meyerson, Jacobs, Potter), while an AP report quotes Gregg Swain saying five. Wikipedia's 1935 Official American Rules comes from an unsourced 2006 game-site page and should not stand. No source read shows when the first card was issued. Sloperama dates the League's yearly rule book (Meyerson's That's It) to April 1937 and starts its flower table at 1937. The earliest cards, the League's early rule books, the 1946-54 copyright registrations and Heinz's 2021 book are still wanted.

Looked for, not found

  • Tournament rules The Standardized National Mah Jongg Tournament Rules (mahjongg.org, 2005) govern tournament play under the card, not its history; not read in this lean pass
  • Law No statute, gazette notice or regulator's rule governs the NMJL card; the League's copyright registrations are sought as records under collection
  • Forum Reddit and BoardGameGeek refuse automated readers; the rec.games.mahjong thread Grokipedia cites was left unread

Known, not yet read

Sources that look worth having but could not be read for this entry. If you can reach one, it can be read and added. Every variant’s list is gathered on Missing sources.

  • Official rules National Mah Jongg League. The earliest Official Standard Hands and Rules cards, 1937 to the 1940s. — The only direct evidence of when the first card was issued and what it held; no source read dates the first card
    Where: The League's own archive in New York; collectors such as the Mah Jongg Collectors Association; the Museum of Jewish Heritage, whose Project Mah Jongg showed early cards and rule books. Tried: Internet Archive advanced and full-text searches (2026-10-09) found no card earlier than an upload of the 2026 card; web searches found no image or description of a 1937 card
  • Scholarship Heinz, Annelise. Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture. Oxford University Press, 2021. — The scholarly history of the League's founding, Viola Cecil, the Essex House meeting and the card's spread
    Where: Libraries and the publisher; in copyright. Tried: Internet Archive full-text search for "National Mah Jongg League" did not return it (2026-10-09); no open copy found
  • Journalism Heinz, Annelise. "How Mahjong Became American—and Jewish." Tablet, May 2021 (title and date from search results). — Per search results, an excerpt from Heinz's book on the fall 1937 Essex House meeting called by Viola Cecil and on the first card
    Where: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/how-mahjong-became-jewish. Tried: The site answered with its own Cloudflare challenge (403) twice on 2026-10-09; read by hand
  • Journalism Time. "Mahjongg history" article, time.com/6045817 (2021), cited by Grokipedia. — A historian's or journalist's account of American mahjong cited for the League's history; author not yet seen
    Where: https://time.com/6045817/mahjongg-history/. Tried: time.com answered 406 twice on 2026-10-09 (the site's refusal); the Wayback CDX query was reset on our side of the proxy
  • Collection United States Copyright Office. Copyright Registration Cards 1946-1954, NATIONAL I-N drawer. Internet Archive item CopyrightCards1946-1954. — Full-text snippets show National Mah Jongg League, Inc. registrations of "Official standard hands and rules" and of a "Tenth revised edition" rule book, which would date card editions
    Where: https://archive.org/details/CopyrightCards1946-1954 (file 19461954NATIONAL_I-N). Tried: The djvu.txt and the search-text file both answered 500 from archive.org, three tries on 2026-10-09 (the site's server error)
  • Historical Meyerson, Dorothy. That's It: How to Play Mahjongg with Playing Cards and Chinese Tiles. New York: National Mah Jongg League, April 1937 (title as given in Sloperama FAQ 11h). — Per Sloperama, the League's own rule book, revised yearly for at least 29 years; it may be the forerunner of, or the first form of, the annual card
    Where: Collectors; libraries through WorldCat. Tried: Internet Archive advanced search for Meyerson found nothing (2026-10-09); WorldCat not searched
  • Historical Cecil, Viola L. Maajh, the American Version of the Ancient Chinese Game. 1938 (title as given in Sloperama FAQ 11h). — Written by the League's founder and first president within a year of the founding
    Where: Collectors; libraries through WorldCat. Tried: Internet Archive advanced search for Maahj and for Cecil as creator found nothing (2026-10-09)
  • Rulebook Tjoa, Tong Seng. Mah Jong Unlimited: The Fundamentals of the Mah Jong Game. Pittsburgh: Dorrance, 1999. — Its full-text snippet dates the League's founding to 1938, the only conflict with 1937 found
    Where: https://archive.org/details/mahjongunlimited0000tjoa (lending only). Tried: The djvu.txt answered 401 (lending restriction, 2026-10-09)
  • Organisation Museum of Jewish Heritage. "Project Mah Jongg." Exhibition page. — The originating museum's account of the exhibition the NMJL funded, which displayed early cards and rule books
    Where: https://mjhnyc.org/exhibitions/project-mah-jongg/. Tried: The site answered with its own Cloudflare challenge (403) on 2026-10-09

Where it was searched

Every place the search checklist names for this variant’s languages, and what each gave, including nothing. The last full pass was on 2026-10-09.

Names searched: English NMJL card, National Mah Jongg League card, Official Standard Hands and Rules, the card, National Mah Jongg League, National Mah-Jongg League, NMJL, American mah jongg card.

16 places searched
  • General web search — Five standard-mode queries on 2026-10-09; extended mode not used. Queries: Heinz with NMJL, 1937 and card; "National Mah Jongg League" first card 1937 Viola Cecil; Project Mah Jongg at the Museum of Jewish Heritage; a Museum of Chinese in America mahjong exhibition; nytimes.com NMJL card history Essex House. Results: Heinz's Tablet excerpt (Cloudflare challenge, wanted); the Museum of Jewish Heritage Project Mah Jongg page (Cloudflare challenge, wanted); The Contemporary Jewish Museum's exhibition page (read). The Jewish Museum Milwaukee post by Ellie Gettinger (jewishmuseummilwaukee.org/?p=241447) answered 403. Unread readable leads: the Strong Museum of Play's Mahjong oral history collection finding aid (archives.museumofplay.org/repositories/3/resources/246); thingsasian.com "From Ningbo to Hoboken"; jewishnewsva.org "Is this your mother's Mah Jongg?", which per its snippet says the founders advertised the Essex House meeting in the New York Times; myjewishlearning.com "Project Mah Jongg" (2010); ilovemahj.com "What is the National Mah Jongg League?"; ohmymahjong.com and themahjongline.com history pages. No exhibition run by the Museum of Chinese in America turned up; results credit MOCA only as an adviser to Project Mah Jongg. The NMJL's 2026 bulletin (nmjlbulletins.blob.core.windows.net/bulletins/202601/index.html) is a script-drawn flipbook with no text in its HTML; not read
  • Wikidata — The wbsearchentities API answered 429 (rate-limited on the shared address) on 2026-10-09, so no item was read. English Wikipedia has no article titled National Mah Jongg League (the parse API returned missingtitle)
  • Wikipedia, in every declared language — Read the English article American mahjong through the API on 2026-10-09. Its 1935 claim cites mahjonged.com through a 2010 Wayback capture, which was chased and read. No NMJL article exists. Other editions not searched: the card is played and written about in English
  • The sources' own references, and who cites them — One round, 2026-10-09. Wikipedia led to mahjonged.com (read). Grokipedia's references led to the NMJL's league.aspx and game.aspx (read) and the Seattle Times AP story (read). The Tablet and Time pieces it cites refused (wanted); its WSJ review "How Mahjong Became American" (2021), Sloperama column 509a, a rec.games.mahjong thread and a YouTube video were left unread. MahjongCompare cites nothing. Sloperama FAQ 11h named Meyerson's That's It (1937) and Cecil's Maajh (1938), both wanted. Leads for a second round, unread: Sloperama column 509a (the flower and joker table by year); Gregg Swain and Ann Israel, Mah Jongg: The Art of the Game (2014); the 1941 convention press coverage that School and Society alludes to; the WSJ review
  • Internet Archive full-text search — Full-text search for "National Mah Jongg League" (304 hits) and advanced searches, 2026-10-09. Read: The New Yorker of 2 October 1937 (OCR, then the New Yorker's own archive page); Chicago Daily Tribune of 2 August 1938; School and Society of 13 September 1941, which in one sentence says the League met in New York in spring 1941 with a convention theme on mah jongg and women's role in democracy (not cited). Read but not cited: uploads of the 2026 card and of Mah Jongg Made Easy (copyright 1984, revised 2020; its preface repeats league.aspx's 1937 account). Both look like unauthorised copies of in-copyright League publications, which CONVENTIONS keeps out. Could not read: Copyright Registration Cards 1946-1954 (archive.org 500) and Tjoa 1999 (lending only, 401); both wanted. Unread leads: Lilith 1979 no. 6 ("founded in 1937 in NYC"); Kohn, Mah-Jongg: Basic Rules & Strategies (1998), which per its snippet says play was "standardized in 1937"; Lo, The Great Mahjong Book (2007); According to Hoyle (1970), where the card is "revised annually"; Canadian Jewish Review of 14 December 1951; Washtenaw Jewish News, February 2011. An advanced search for Meyerson's and Cecil's books found nothing
  • Wayback Machine — The raw capture of mahjonged.com/mahjong_history.html of 15 August 2010 (id_) was read on 2026-10-09. Later re-fetches, and a CDX query for the Time article, were reset on our side of the proxy (ws_closed_mid_exchange) the same day
  • Google Books — Not searched: its API answered 429 in earlier passes, and the main secondary work, Heinz (2021), is in copyright; listed as wanted
  • HathiTrust full-text search — Not searched: full-text search sits behind a Cloudflare challenge, and the League's publications and Heinz's book are in copyright
  • WorldCat — Not searched in this lean pass. It is the next place to look up holdings of Meyerson's That's It (1937) and Cecil's Maajh (1938)
  • Scholarly indexes — Not searched: OpenAlex wants a key and answered 429 before. The key scholarly work, Annelise Heinz's 2021 book, is already known and wanted
  • YouTube — Not searched: video explainers teach the current card rather than its history. One YouTube video cited by Grokipedia (watch?v=MYLrZCOv2wA) was left unread
  • English-language forums — Not searched: Reddit answers 403 and BoardGameGeek a Cloudflare challenge. A rec.games.mahjong thread cited by Grokipedia (groups.google.com/g/rec.games.mahjong/c/lTDLqLLykFY) was left unread
  • Mahjong reference sites — Re-read the Mahjong Wiki's American Overview (the canonical source) and glanced at its American Scoring page ("The NMJL publishes a new scoring card each year"), 2026-10-09. Read Sloperama FAQ 11h (timeline) and FAQ 7i (cards). Neither site counts as independent of the chart; their leads (Meyerson 1937, Cecil 1938, column 509) went to wanted or the citations note
  • App and platform listings — Not searched: the League's own NMJL Online app (App Store id6476651173, linked from its homepage) is a game, not a source on the card's history
  • English-language newspaper archives — Chronicling America through the loc.gov JSON API answered 200 on 2026-10-09. "mah jongg league", 1936-1963, gave 5 page hits, all unread: Arizona Post of 16 April 1948, 18 January 1952 and 15 April 1955; Evening Star (Washington) of 2 January 1946 and 27 January 1947. "mah-jongg league" OR "mah jong league", 1936-1941, gave none. The 1938 Chicago Daily Tribune was read through the Internet Archive. The New York Times archive (TimesMachine) needs a subscription and was not tried. Trove, Papers Past, NewspaperSG and the BNA were not searched: the League is a US body
  • Statutes published in English — Not searched: no statute or regulator governs the NMJL card, and the listed Asian statute databases do not cover a US game

In the tree

Descends from Regional US house rules, as the source chart draws it.

Descends into

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